Red Lake shootings

The Red Lake shootings were an incident of spree killing on March 21, 2005 that occurred in two places on the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Red Lake, Minnesota, United States. That morning, 16-year-old Jeffrey Weise killed his grandfather (a tribal police officer) and his grandfather's girlfriend at their home. After taking his grandfather's police weapons and vest, Weise drove his grandfather's police vehicle to Red Lake Senior High School, where he had been a student some months before.

Weise shot and killed seven people at the school, and wounded five others. The dead included an unarmed security guard at the entrance of the school, then a teacher and five students. After the police arrived, Weise exchanged gunfire with them. He was wounded and then died by suicide in a vacant classroom.

By some accounts, Weise was living with his paternal grandfather, Daryl Lussier, Sr., a sergeant with the Red Lake Police Department, run by the Red Lake Ojibwe tribal government. The household included his grandfather's younger girlfriend, Michelle Leigh Sigana. His paternal aunts Shauna and Tammy Lussier said he had lived mostly with them for the past several years, and they helped him get treatment to deal with some of his behavioral issues and depression. In 1999, Jeff Weise's mother suffered severe brain damage in a car accident and had to receive care in a nursing home. Still a child, Weise was forced to move from Minneapolis to live with his father's family on the reservation. His father had committed suicide in 1997, so Weise was officially placed with his grandmother, Shelda (Gurneau) Lussier. His aunts Shauna and Tammy Lussier helped care for him, especially after the grandmother's death in 2003.

The reservation of the Red Lake Band of Ojibwe (aka Chippewa) is in northwest Minnesota and is one of two nationally that are "closed": only Ojibwe tribal members may live there and own land. Its residents suffer high rates of unemployment, violence, and suicide. Housing is poor, and many students do not finish high school. Work opportunities are limited on the reservation, which has a population of more than 5,000. A study in 2004 found that a high proportion of students in high school had thought of suicide.